Draft Night Wrap Up

As you’ve seen already, the Celtics picked up JR Giddens with the 30th pick. Here’s Doc’s take:

“We think he has a chance to fight for minutes right away because of his defense. He’s got incredible wingspan, great feet, and we feel that defensively he can be an NBA player right away. The other things we’ll work on. He’s had some run-ins with people. Steve Alford, who coached him last year, thought he was terrific. That’s good enough for us. We knew three or four teams (picking) right in front of us liked him. Several guys dropped and fell to those teams. We thought as of like the 24th pick (of) the two guys that we liked one of them would be there.”

Here’s Giddens:

“[I’m going to] try to earn a position and, if I’m, fortunate enough to get some playing time, I’ll be happy, but if not I’ll sit on the bench and clap.”

On his “off the court” issues:

“I feel like I’ve overcome those things. I was just a young guy, immature, made some bad decisions. … Now that I’m older, I feel I can do a lot better.”

As for our other picks: The Celtics traded for Bill Walker, 6’6″ forward out of Kansas State, who was selected in the second round by Washington and acquired for cash. With the final pick in the draft, the C’s selected 6’11” center Semih Erden of Turkey. He may not join the team right away due to contractual obligations.

The analysts seem to think this was a strong draft for the Celtics considering they had the lowest position possible. Walker is being talked about as another possible second round steal for Danny Ainge. Here’s the first line of his NBADraft.net profile:

Strengths: An absolutely jaw dropping, electrifying dunker capable of getting air like the greatest dunkers of all time, Jordan, Dominique, Vince Carter, Josh Smith etc